


Not Coming Back

by Mildredo



Category: Queer as Folk (UK)
Genre: Angst, POV First Person, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-08
Updated: 2011-10-08
Packaged: 2017-10-24 10:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mildredo/pseuds/Mildredo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vince isn't going back to him this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Coming Back

**Author's Note:**

> Just finished, probably full of glaring errors but maybe that gives it a raw quality or something? idk. I just can't listen to any more Dido.
> 
> Set after Vince's party in episode 7. Except Vince doesn't go back in, he leaves after Rosalie calls him a poof and doesn't go back up for his stuff.
> 
> Title and lyrics are from See You When You're 40 by Dido. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPilKUPw-y0&feature=related]

_You think that you are complicated, deep mystery to all  
Well it's taken me a while to see you're not so special  
All energy, no meaning, with a lot of words  
So paper thin that one real feeling could knock you down  
And I've seen tonight what I'd been warned about  
I'm gonna leave tonight before I change my mind_

 _  
_

I’ve wasted my life on him. Near enough sixteen years I’ve waited for him. Been his lapdog, his whipping boy, his acolyte. Worshipped the ground he walked on, envied every single person who got to have him in a way I never would, become all but surgically attached to his hip. Even his sister calls me looking for him, because he’s always with me. Every time he hurt me, I’d go back. No more. I’ve said that before. Never really meant it. I do now. This time I mean it with everything I have. I can’t go back to him after this. He’s spent years chipping away, gradually wearing me down. Tonight the rope snapped. We’re falling away from each other after a tug-of-war lasting half a lifetime. The faster and further I drive, the faster and further I fall away from him. Run like the wind. That’s what he said to me tonight. He meant Cameron but now I’m running from both of them. I don’t know where I’m going, what direction I’m heading in or how fast I’m moving. All I can see is the road blurring past and all I can hear is the radio turned up as loud as it’ll go and I’m finally going to be free of him and everything that comes with him. All the shit he doesn’t want people to see because they’ll think he’s weak and so he lays it all on me. I know him better than anyone else but that’s not a good thing. The rest of the world just see the arrogance and the confidence and the money and the sex, and the only reason they get to see that is because all of the rest of it falls onto me. His family, his past, his fears, his weaknesses. He’s always had me to stop him if he’s about to go too far. I don’t get enough credit in the performance that is his life. He’s got top billing, his name in lights, and I’m in the small print on the back page of the programme. He won’t last long without me. I’ve been his crutch, a stabilising influence, for too long. He can’t ruin my life with one shit birthday. I can ruin his by leaving him alone. I want to turn around, go back and carry on with everything, because I do love him, despite everything. But there’s a bigger part of me saying no. No, you’re finally free, he’s cut you loose, he can deal with the consequences of his actions for once. So I keep driving. I feel a bit guilty about leaving Cameron with that lot; he’s innocent in all of this, he just got swept up in it all because he actually liked me, and that’s what happens when blokes actually like _me_. Stuart makes it his mission to destroy them. It was different with Cameron, though. In the past, he’s taken them out pretty swiftly with not a lot of effort. This time he was really trying, like he was genuinely jealous. One real feeling and he practically self destructs. I feel sorry for everyone left to deal with it, but it won’t be me. I’m not cleaning up his mess any more. I’m gone.

 

 

 _So see me when you’re 40, lost and all alone  
Being comforted by strangers you'll never need to know  
Not sad because you lost me  
Sad because you thought it was cool to be sad  
You think misery will make you stand apart from the crowd  
Well, if you had walked past me today, I wouldn't have picked you out_

 _  
_

I don’t know where he went. He just fucked off. I deserve it. I deserve to be lying here, drunk and hungover, wondering where he is. He could be anywhere. He could be dead. He was drinking, and his car’s gone. He could’ve crashed, been burned beyond all recognition, died thinking I hated him. And I probably wouldn’t even know, because Hazel’s not speaking to me and neither is anyone else, but that’s not unusual. I didn’t do what I did because he wasn’t out at work. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. I did it because I hated seeing him how he was. He could’ve been happy with Cameron. I don’t like the bloke much, but they could’ve been happy. And if not Cameron, then it would be the next one, or the next one, but he’d never be able to let go of me for long enough to realise that there are people who will make him happier. People who are better than me. I couldn’t be his safety net any more. He needed a push – more than a push, he needed a massive slap in the face. He was miserable. He’d spent every day since we were fourteen waiting for me to love him and it wasn’t fair on him any more. It wasn’t fair on him a long time ago, it was becoming downright cruel now and I am not cruel, I’m not. I can be a wanker but I’m not cruel. It was for his own good. I thought I was being benevolent, giving him something I should’ve given him a long time ago. Freedom. But now, in this still-drunk-yet-hungover haze, it’s dawned on me that it was the worst thing I could do. He’ll be miserable forever now. I feel like I’ve got a limb missing, he probably feels like he has none left at all. If we’d never met and I saw him today, I’d walk straight past. I wouldn’t waste my time. He doesn’t stand out from the crowd.  I don’t have anyone without him. Our friends were his friends, really. They just put up with me, but they won’t now. I’ve achieved what I’ve spent so long trying for. I’ve let him loose, I’m on my own with no one to stop me. And it’s all wrong. The flat’s a mess. His presents are everywhere, there are giant, multi-coloured prints of his face everywhere – inescapable – and everything’s ruined. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Shit.


End file.
